Jordanians Turn Back Relief for Tomato-Starved Israelis

The first fruits of Israel’s peace with Jordan--a 20-ton truckload of ripe tomatoes bound for Israel--were turned back at the border crossing Thursday by Jordanian agricultural officials.

The tomato turnaround at the Jordan River--ordered because the fruit was of inferior quality--was bad news for Israeli consumers. They are suffering a tomato shortage that is causing near-panic in a society that commonly eats the acidic fruit at breakfast, lunch and dinner. Israeli officials want to import Jordanian tomatoes to help bring prices down.

In October, the Israeli market saw only 8,000 tons of tomatoes; the normal monthly volume is 13,000 tons. By Thursday, tomato prices had hit 10 shekels a kilo--about $1.50 per pound--in grocery stores. Tomatoes have not been so costly since 1989, when they briefly sold for 12 shekels a kilo.

The tomato crisis already has produced several public polls on who is to blame--a majority think it is the government’s fault--and on whether Israelis are willing to boycott the fruit until the price drops. Ninety percent of people polled by Israel Radio said they will boycott. But sales remain brisk.

The crisis also has led to charges that the Labor government has destroyed Israeli agriculture by trying to end subsidies and institute market principles in farming. “Following the Finance Ministry’s disastrous policy, which led to an unprecedented price increase of vegetables and fruits, the state’s capacity to provide the citizens with the basic foods . . . at reasonable cost is in doubt,” charged Shalom Simchon, general secretary of the nation’s cooperative farm movement. Simchon called for a commission to be appointed to investigate the government’s actions.

At this time last year, tomatoes were selling for less than 60 cents a pound. Over the summer, farmers sold tomatoes wholesale for as low as 6 cents a pound. The low summer prices sparked angry demonstrations by farmers, who pelted Agriculture Minister Yaacov Tsur’s office with tomatoes.

The Israeli Agriculture Ministry had already been importing tomatoes from the Netherlands to try to alleviate the current shortage. But transportation costs make the Dutch tomatoes as expensive as local ones.

In desperation, the Agriculture Ministry turned to Jordan. Israel signed a peace treaty with the neighboring Arab state last month, and the treaty went into effect last week.

But Jordanian officials turned back the first post-peace shipment of tomatoes because much of it had been damaged in the picking process, said Ronni Hassid, a spokesman for the Israeli Agriculture Ministry.

“We hope to try again, with a new shipment, on Sunday,” Hassid said, adding that the ministry hopes to start importing 100 tons of tomatoes a day by the start of next week.

The tomato shortage was caused partly by farmers’ anticipation that inexpensive fruits and vegetables would start flowing in from the Gaza Strip after Palestinian autonomy was instituted there in May, Hassid said.

“We advised the farmers to plant something else instead of tomatoes,” he said. But earlier this month, Israel banned the import of Gazan produce after several dozen cases of cholera were discovered in the impoverished strip.

Within days of the ban, the price of tomatoes began to rise. Consumers started to complain, but they kept buying. They were not even deterred by Finance Minister Avraham Shohat’s televised advice earlier this week that prices would fall if Israelis would stop buying.

“When I was a child growing up, I didn’t eat tomatoes in the winter, and I didn’t turn out so badly,” Shohat told a television reporter.

“What does Shohat know?” said Eli Mizrachi, a produce seller in Mahane Yehuda, a popular open-air market in Jerusalem. “He’s too busy eating tomatoes to worry about their price.”

Mahane Yehuda is where the capital’s shoppers buy high-quality fruits and vegetables at bargain prices. Mizrachi was selling tomatoes Thursday for eight shekels a kilo--about $1.20 per pound.

“We don’t have a choice but to buy them,” said Mark Edelman, a shopper who handed Mizrachi a bag of tomatoes to weigh. “Besides, the price of all food is expensive, so we would have to stop eating everything if we stopped buying because of the price.”

Indeed, although tomatoes jumped 53% in price in October, other popular items of produce were not far behind. Cabbage rose 46.3%, eggplant increased in price by 36.6% and cucumbers rose by 28.2%. All are staples of the Israeli diet.